Council renews aim to have bypass open by 2019

The Galway City Outer Bypass is now back on the table with new consultants to be in place by the end of the month and a fresh application where all route options will be re-examined likely to be made in early 2015 for the €300m project.

Galway City Councillors last night voted to hand Galway County Council status as lead authority over the scheme, which at the earliest – if no further obstacles were encountered – could be completed by 2019.

Director of Services for roads, transportation, marine and general services at Galway County Council, Frank Gilmore, denied claims by several councillors that it was to blame for a series of near fatal setbacks to the project, which was first mooted in 1999 but was stalled after successful legal challenges that went all the way to Europe.

So far €14m had been spent on the scheme despite a single sod being turned, he admitted. This did not include paying for the legal expenses of those who had mounted the challenge, which may yet have to met.

Mr Gilmore said the decision of the EU Court of Justice found that it was An Bord Pleanála which had erred in granting a decision to approve part of the road under Article 6(3) of the EU Habitats Directive while it took no issue with the merits of the scheme.

It should have processed the project under Article 6(4), which is a fast-tracking of major infrastructural projects which are deemed to have imperative reasons of overriding public interest (IROPI) because of the impact it would have on a protected bog, designated a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).

Mr Gilmore said he believed the project would proceed with the cooperation of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), which had clashed with other state departments and opposed part of the scheme because its adverse impact on the SAC when an oral hearing was held in 2006.

The Council was currently working with NPWS to advance habitat mapping for a revised scheme.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.